Summary: TEHRAN (FNA)- Lawyers for Guantanamo Bay prisoners said
that a widespread hunger strike is underway over deteriorating
conditions.

Attorneys for more than a dozen of the prisoners said in a letter
to the prison commander, Rear Adm. John Smith, and released to the media
that "all but a few men" have been on hunger strike for three
weeks. They said the situation "appears to be rapidly deteriorating
and reaching a potentially critical level", AP reported.

The lawyers said the protest was prompted by a series of searches
that began on Feb 6 in which a number of personal items, including
religious CDs, blankets and legal mail, were confiscated, and included
what they felt were overly intrusive searches of their Qurans by Arabic
translators that amounted to desecration.

"As their health has deteriorated, we have received reports of
men coughing up blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness,
becoming weak and fatigued, and being moved to Camp V for
observation," the lawyers wrote, referring to a camp that is used
in part to hold men who violate prison rules.

A prison spokesman, Navy Capt. Robert Durand, said the Department
of Justice would respond to the attorney's letter, but added that
there were only about six prisoners who have missed enough meals to be
classified under the military's rules as being on hunger strike. He
said that number has remained constant for about a year.

The US holds about 166 men at the prison. A mass hunger strike
involved many of the prisoners in the summer of 2005 but the protest
dwindled after the military began strapping them down and force-feeding
them a liquid nutrient mix to prevent them from starving to death.

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